Tustin Larson prepared a video tutorial on how to use the GL2's title mix function (i.e. graphic files stored on the SD flash card) to accomplish this. See the main page of the "GL2 Son of Watchdog" section of DVInfo.net for a link to Tustin's tutorial.

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Chris, he's not asking for the tutorial, he's wondering what size the color bars are suppose to be.

I also was wondering about this and Mr. Larson's e-mail didn't accpet my e-mail I sent. I tried making a few ones in Photoshop but look kind of unproportioned. If I find a good looking one I'll post a link of my jpeg for anyone wanting it.

I was looking at some of the accesories that are available for GL2, and see that there is a widescreen 16:9 lens available.

Would a lens give a substantially better 16:9 picture?
It costs about $699, so it would be a very expensive lens to get (for me anyways), but I intend to shoot some documentaries and a short film I want to submit to sundance 2005, so would it be worth it?

How would you set up the camera with one of those? Would you shoot in 60i or 30p?

A quick second question -

I thought I read someplace that it's better to shoot in 60i so you can convert later to 24p in editing later if you want, but you can't do that with 30p without major problems. Is that correct?

A good anamorphic lens will produce better results than the in-camera 16:9 feature. It will, however, take some practice to learn its use.

You can't really convert 60i to 24p in your editor. If what you're really asking is how to shoot for a future film transfer, then the place to get the best answer is from the film transfer shop you plan to use. They each seem to have different opinions and requirements.

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I just bought a Century anamorphic adapter off of eBay, and this thing is awesome. The difference in image quality on a native anamorphic television is dramatic. But even with the adapter, if you were just going to display the image letterboxed on a regular television, the difference would be much less pronounced, and might not be noticeable at all. It's easier to use than I had hoped. Autofocus seems to work just fine, maybe slightly slower than without it, but not by much. It also gives a wider angle of view with very little distortion -- much better than the WD-58. I'm also finding that it's a lot easier to adjust the lens than I had feared, as long you don't obsess about getting it perfectly vertical every time. In fact, you generally want to cheat it out to one side or the other just a little, so it's best to trust your eyes and go with it. Keep an eye on eBay, they show up pretty regularly, and generally sell in the mid-$300 range. I paid $390, which included a Century Series 9 sunshade, and even a Series 9 UV filter.

I am not the last-word expert on this, but no I do not believe the 60i -> 24p conversion is effectively reachable within an NLE program. It would require a 3rd party product like MB (which operates out of After Effects) to simulate such a conversion to the best of my knowledge.

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I prefer using the guide lines that you can enable on the GL2 through its viewfinder, and then cropping in post. I think whenever an effect your planning on using, whether it's simply cropping or something more complex, can be done in post, it should always be done in post.

I guess it's also more of a subjective preference in using the bars. I prefer to capture the entire full frame though, in case something does go past the white lines, you can always move the bars in post, by panning up during the editing process, in case you make any mistakes and anything goes out of frame.

I always shoot in 4:3 and sometimes crop down to a 16x9 in post but not always. I think some things are more suited to the 16x9 shape but you have to decide on whether you want to view it later on a TV 16x9 or 4:3 and then shoot accordingly ie. still shoot in 4:3 mode either way but compose the framing of the shots with the aid of the 16x9 bars if you are gonna crop down post.